Lesser visited, but highly ranked landing paged dropped in rank on Google. Time for a content update?

[Ticket_King]

I noticed that my page one ranked landing pages that don't get a lot of love from me have dropped in rank big time on Google this week.  This is a site that has static (meaning, I can't freshen up the content easily) landing pages for products that we sell.  The pages that dropped are the ones that have the fewest inbound links, and don't get much attention on the social media side.  Our most important landing pages have also dropped, but just a few spots on page one.  This is a first for me.  Does anyone think that this is a "lack of freshness" penalty? We are still number one on page one for our brand search terms.  Would fresh content give me a shot at getting the pages back up?  I'm willing to update them slowly, but before I go crazy, I'm reaching out to the pros here.

[lavellester]

How far have they dropped in ranking and has traffic also dropped off completely?  I'd wonder what your competitors (e.g. the sites now above you) are doing - may be worth checking out their pages etc.  Just curious as I know this question will come up for every SEO someday!

[Ticket_King]

The pages in question dropped anywhere from 17 positions, to 45 on a couple. The timing of this is (almost) amusing, because I had a meeting scheduled with the company owner to discuss the fact that our site needs to change to allow for fresh content.  It's a template site that around 200 other companies use in our industry, and I have been limited from day one as to what I can do SEO wise.  The other sites that rank have all updated a while back.  I have five other sites that we built from the ground up. They allow me to add "News" and "event updates" and they are slowly working their way up the pages. I reached out to another company that has the same template site as ours.  We'll see if they have the same issues.  I may just update the static content on one or two of the pages, and track it in the coming weeks.  Lastly, I can certainly see that there are now pages from news sites that are pushing their way into search landscape.  I'm leaning towards a non-freshness penalty.

[lavellester]

Would be cool to hear how things go - might make for a good YouMoz post

[EGOL]

Our most important landing pages have also dropped, but just a few spots on page one.

When I hear this the first thing that comes to my mind is a couple of hungry competitors or a single hungry competitor with two sites.

So, my question is.... Who is beating you today that was not beating you six months ago?

[AlanMosley]

There is a good blog post about freshness, dont panic is a good takaway, depending on your content it may not be a good idea to freshen up

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-fresh-factor

[Ticket_King]

Yes, you replied to my post last week when my most important pages dropped a few spots to a new site.  That's bound to happen, and a new site has hit #1. I'm talking about other landing pages that have dropped a whole page or two.  These landing pages have ranked in the top five on page one for well over a year.  I guess I was leaning towards a freshness issue because the sites that now rank on page one do have a freshness theme, aside from a few others that just kill everyone else with fantastic PA, DA, and inbound links.